New Search Interface

[Laura F.]

Hello Forum Users - 

Today we have enabled a new search interface for the NI Discussion Forums & Idea Exchanges. The interface offers many new features that I hope you will find helpful. 

Overview of improvements and changes:

• Easy access to filters: 
• location (board, idea exchange)
• author
• date
• solved or kudoes 
• type (forum or idea)
• contents (has image or attachment)
• Easy removal of filters - after selecting one, you can delete it at the top of the search results
• Top level search suggests content as you type (it can be disabled)
• Option to sort results by Date, Views, Kudos, Replies or Best Match
• By default, threads and ideas (also known as "topics") are returned rather than the individual messages but you can expand the Advanced Search section to change back to messages ("specific posts")
• Quickly jump from search results list to see who kudoed a message by clicking on the number of kudos
• User search returns blocks of information for the users that match your search. You can sort the results by Login, Rank, Posts, and Registration Date
• New icons explaining how to search before posting when you click "New Message" in a forum board

As you use this new feature please let me know your thoughts. I will forward the feedback along to our forum vendor for future improvements.

Regards,

Laura
Web Support & Operations
National Instruments

[altenbach]

I just clicked on the search button with nothing entered and got the following:

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An Unexpected Error has occurred. Sorry, your request failed.

A notification has been sent to the development team to investigate.

Exception ID: 14120062

Please click the Back button on your browser.

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The second time it worked.

Looks good so far, but I have to play with it for a while. Most likely, anything will be better than the old search 😄

[Darin.K]

Not a huge fan yet, perhaps I haven't figured things out.  First of all, I do not like how the relevant post can sometimes be hidden in the 'Replies' to the original post in a thread.  Sorting by Kudos seems to sort based on Kudos received by the original post, not the reply itself.  Original search will sometimes claim there are two pages of results, when you get to page 2 it shows you there is a page 3, on page 3 you now have page 4, etc.  Changing the search parameters leaves you on the original page, so I do a search, move to page 4, change the search and I am now on page 4 of the new search and have to move back.  Perhaps I will get used to this.

I still miss the good old days when a simple search would easily return all posts by a given user. The real number as well, not "About 200" or "About 20"

[altenbach]

I agree, it is still a bit rough....

I notice I get the error quoted above if I click the search button while holding down the shift key (to open the search in a new window).

[altenbach]

Some more comments:

1. The "by date" section is misleading. (e.g. "A week ago" should probably called "newer than one week" or similar because it (hopefully) includes all posts newer than one week, and not just the posts posted exactly a week ago.
2. If I select "a week ago", the search filter line shows "up to 07-06-2011", which is also incorrect. Using "up/down" for a time scale is confusing in general, but since time increases from old to new, the words "up to 07-06-2011" could logically be interpreted as "older than 07-06-2011", which is the exact opposite. 
3. The search results no longer have the little icons to show if the posts have an image or attachment. I miss them.

[PhillipBrooks]

Sorting by Kudos has finally arrived. I was going to post Holy cr@p but Darin already used that to comment on the mobile features.

I don't check the forums much outside of work, but I'm gonna check out how things look on my new iPad tonight.

Great job with the forums Laura and keep it up! ( even if we do nitpick the moment you add something  )

[Wolfgang]

It is sad that searching for authors does not work fo all authors...

[Ben]

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@Phillip Brooks wrote:

Sorting by Kudos has finally arrived. I was going to post Holy cr@p but Darin already used that to comment on the mobile features.

I don't check the forums much outside of work, but I'm gonna check out how things look on my new iPad tonight.

Great job with the forums Laura and keep it up! ( even if we do nitpick the moment you add something  )

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Could you give me a hint as to hwo you did that?

I poked at it for about 3 minutes and gave up.

Ben

[Laura F.]

Thanks for the initial feedback everyone!

Altenbach - the shift click issue must be specific to Chrome, I'll report it.  I'll also pass along your suggestions about the date ranges and the icons.

Darin.K - It's interesting that you prefer the old way of returning every message.  That had been a big annoyance for many users a long time ago, but I guess everyone acclimated. Anyhow, you can switch between returning "topics" and "specific posts" if you expand the Advanced Search section (linked next to search button).  I will warn you that the Advanced Search section behavior is not quite what I would expect in the way that it behaves if you've already performed a search and then expand the advanced section. I'm also not a fan of how it collapses and I've given all of this feedback to Lithium. Also, if you find yourself navigating pages often you can change the number of results in the Advanced Search section. Do you often need to know exactly how many results / pages there are? I've often heard the quote about Google and the percentage of people looking past the first page is minuscule and we see the same behavior on ni.com.  We hope that means that people will refine their search and try again, but I'm never quite sure. 

Philip - Thanks, glad you like it!  (Don't worry, I put my thick skin on for new feature releases. Plus Lithium gets all sorts of good feedback from you all that helps them improve the product)

Wolfgang - can you please give more information about the author search? I'm not sure I understand.

Ben - On the search page, there is a gray rectangle above the search results list.  On the right hand side, there is a "Sorted by:" link / drop down.  Click on that and you can sort the results by Kudos.

Regards,

Laura

[Wolfgang]

Many thanks, Laura, for taking care!

My comment is related to your post here where I had to learn that using my user name doesn't work... It doesn't work with the new author filter either which probably is not the fault of the filter but still it is sad that I am out of luck and prevented from enjoying all these nice features... Could it be possibly fixed? If I am searching for an earlier post of mine it would be really helpful - because I keep forgetting my ID while luckily I remember my user name

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As for your name, unfortunately there are other forum accounts with the same name and the system can't determine which one to choose but the user ID is unique.

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